But here’s the really chilling part: A massive East Coast storm has worsened the most complicated, confusing polling environment since the invention of the telephone.

(Little known fact: The second sentence Alexander Graham Bell spoke into the telephone was “Mr. Watson, if the election were being held today, would you vote for Republican Rutherford Hayes or Democrat Samuel Tilden?”)

As if this closing week wasn’t enough of a phantasmagoria, there is the terrifying thought that Ohio isn’t aligning with the national polls.

The current Real Clear Politics averages of polls continue to show a national lead of about 1 point for Republican Mitt Romney but also a consistent Ohio advantage for President Obama of 2.4 points.

First of all, have you seen the internals of the latest Ohio polls? They’re so messed up they look like the Marlboro Man’s chest film. If that’s not enough to comfort you, let’s add a few “Washington Secrets” into the mix:

According to a GOP analysis of early voting and absentee ballot requests provided to Secrets, the Democrats are turning out their most reliable, or so-called “high propensity voters” than Republicans, leaving fewer for Election Day. The GOP is pushing weaker supporters to vote early, expecting high enthusiasm to drive their regular supporters to the polls next week.

“Democrats are cannibalizing their high-propensity voters in advance of election day to get stories that they are winning,” said a GOP analyst. “But in effect they are stealing from Peter, or Election Day, to pay Paul, or early voting.”

…

“Republicans will have more reliable voters available on Election Day and are spending our efforts turning out low propensity voters in the absentee and early voting periods,” added the analysis.

Now let’s think a little more about what’s going on in Sandy’s terrible wake. The Democrats have already turned out many of their most-likely voters, and things are likely to still be a mess in in much of the Northeast on Election Day. How much trouble are marginal Democrats likely to suffer to cast a ballot for SCoaMF? (I talked about this very thing with Stephen Kruiser yesterday when we taped his Trifecta segment.) Meanwhile, the GOP still has a sizable reserve of Broken Glass Voters who haven’t voted early, but will crawl naked over broken glass to vote for Romney. This is exactly the kind of sleeper effort RNC chair Reince Priebus has been hinting at as he brags about his ground game. Obama is counting on the headline numbers, while Reince is playing the long game.

Romney currently leads Obama 52% to 45% among voters who say they have already cast their ballots. However, that is comparable to Romney’s 51% to 46% lead among all likely voters in Gallup’s Oct. 22-28 tracking polling. At the same time, the race is tied at 49% among those who have not yet voted but still intend to vote early, suggesting these voters could cause the race to tighten. However, Romney leads 51% to 45% among the much larger group of voters who plan to vote on Election Day, Nov. 6.

That is, as John Nolte counts it, a 22-point collapse from Obama’s 2008 early voting numbers. Still not satisfied? Gallup polled over 3,000 actual voters to arrive at those figures. Not “likely voters,” not “registered voters,” but “actual live voters who voted.” And they only needed about 1,000 or so to get to a reliable margin of error.

Still, you might argue the Reince’s long game is hardly long, with Tuesday less than a week away. But it’s still a smarter game the one Team Obama is playing, which is just an absentee ballot variation on Operation Demoralize.

Don’t fall for it. Keep your chin up and get out and vote. And remember, voting is a lot like showering: It’s more fun with a friend. So bring one or two along with you on Tuesday.

There is no doubt that fraud will be very high, and the Dems have already been caught with their hands on the fraudulent lever. The very fact that Moran’s son was caught with his pants down – so to speak – is probably the tip.

But no matter. At the end of the day most Americans know that they are worse off than there were 4 yrs ago. Most Americans realize that he let other Americans die on the job. And many Americans have a suspicion that he is the most anti-American POTUS ever!

Also, a lot of us BGVs who voted early *won’t talk to or answer polls* Period. I’ve posted comments before about my one and only interaction with a pre-voting poll, so won’t belabor it. Think of us as the stealth voters … sneak in, vote, sneak out … and a huge explosion ensues

Cute. Does it ever occur to you that Romney and Ryan and other Republicans might be relying on polling data? They need to know where to concentrate their precious campaign dollars.

I’ll never get people who proudly slam the phone down on pollsters (but affix a bumper sticker to their cars so thousands of strangers will know their political leaning?) or spend precious time deliberately screwing with them.

I suppose these are the same people who grumble to high heaven about how “it’s all marketing” with Hollywood, pro athletes, etc. I’m a pro-choice female who likes the Twilight saga, and I respond to marketing surveys. The more you slam down the phone, the less competition for me.

Agree with you here. I don’t own a landline phone, so I don’t get polled, but if I did the first thing I’d probably do is ask who is conducting the poll. Our side relies on them just as much as their side does. The only reason I could think of to slam down the phone would be if they asked questions that were so blatantly biased you could be certain it was a junk survey.

It’s not over till it’s over. I’m phonebanking on Monday and volunteering 12 hours on the poll on Tuesday. And G-d willing and us bringing this safely home, I’m sleeping for the rest of the week, with an optional weekend of painting Denver a bright shade of cherry red, before I’m human again and start watching to see what the Mad Duck will do. (Best hope? He and Michelle decide to bask in what remains of the position/adoration by taking world tours. I’ll gladly shut up about wasting tax payer money. I swear.)

Denver- had an Obama supporter walk past my Romney sign and Romney bumper sticker and ring my door bell to ask me if Obama could count on my support. I told him no, he sighed rather deeply and asked me if I planned to vote early, and told him yes. He graciously informed me where my early voting place was located and asked if I would like some Obama lit, again I declined. His demeanor seemed melancholy and rather forlorned, scratching his head as he walked a way, a leaf cast off onto the surf of the coming tidal wave. I’m please as hell to hear early voting in Colorado is turning out R+7, especially since we surfed the wave backwards in 2010!

In Colorado Springs — up and down too, because I don’t know how the rest of the COUNTRY is doing. I’d bet on CO going for Romney though. We were caught in traffic on the way to Red Rocks and were probably not even counted as turned away but even JUST the traffic jam was… massive. It had “that” feel.

Haha your comment about them going on a world tour reminds me of something I’ve always said, that if every member of congress met once, voted themselves a billion dollars each, and went home for the rest of the year it would save the country a tremendous amount of money. When they’re spending on themselves they can’t waste as much money as when they’re pushing some cause (see Obamacare)

Since the polls aren’t really following up their early voter check with anything to determine whether those respondents are being honest, it does throw Gallup’s numbers into question. But from what we’ve seen of the way the polls skew nationally anyway, maybe this actually is too Democratic a result. That’s kind of a strange thought.

Here’s the question of the hour: Suppose that 22-point shift is more or less accurate. Nationally. Doesn’t it seem likely the same shift would apply to Election Day voters as opposed to early voters? If more Republicans are avoiding the early voting in favor of the day itself, would that shift conceivably be even higher?

Lummox, the Dems are sacrificing Election day voters to turn out early voters in hopes of gaining a narrative that is flopping big time. Republicans are always big election day voters, so when early voting is turning up R+ all over the nation that can only mean a landslide R. I’m feeling pretty damn good right now, and so far no one has graffitied my Romney sign!

Hoping you’re right, and by extension Stephen. I think there’s a possibility that Republicans are so fired up that some are voting early just to get their vote in as soon as possible. If that’s the case, those same voters won’t vote on Election Day, but maybe there are plenty more to replace them. If the same rule of thumb holds this year that Republicans turn out more on the day itself, if it’s not just that people are so anxious to cast their ballot that they’re voting early, then Obama has truly already lost.

Heh times several. My wife and I have just moved into a new precinct with a polling location we’ve never been to before — and both of us are free all day so we can choose a time when traffic might be a bit less congested.

Most of them, fortunately. FWIW early voting should be eliminated; it only increases the power of incumbency. All the new voting schemes that make voting “easy” allow too many fools to cast ballots. Too much Democracy is NOT a good thing.

We do the vote-by-mail thing – both of my parents are handicapped and I’m a caregiver. *I* might could get out –I can generally manage a half hour here or there–so if there were no lines, I’d be ok. But there’s no way I could get both of them to the polls as well – not without a lot of expensive help.

In many states, there are laws that require employers to ensure that they allow their employees sufficient time to vote, so in theory there shouldn’t be too many situations where people simply don’t have time to go to the polls. On the other hand, a few years ago Washington moved to all mail voting, and no longer has polls in the first place.

My take on the Democrat early-vote is that the party looked at their internal polls, saw that support on their side was flagging, and decided that getting those wavering Dems to vote now for BHO was a way of preventing their defection next week.

Also, as a show-of-support, it might help shore up Dem votes in heavily Dem neighborhoods.

Or maybe they simply don’t know what they’re doing — which is certainly consistent with the last four years.

The Dems reason that early voting gives them many days to nag their natural supporters into showing up and voting. From the point of view of those who want to avoid the hassle, it’s much more difficult to stay out of sight during the entire early evoting period than it is to stay out of sight just during election day. The wild card is that many poor Dem voters have had to pick up and move because they couldn’t find work (and so needed to live in a cheaper apartment or move in with relatives) This makes just finding these low intensity voters very difficult even with all that extra search time due to early voting.

I confess I voted early (Ohio), because I simply couldn’t stand to wait another day to vote against the SCoaMF. I even voted before the first debate. Since then, Romney’s performance in the debates and on the campaign trail have served as delicious icing on the cake, making me glad I voted for him, rather than just against the other guy.

I’m in Missouri. I answered the call. Once. I wanted to drop a negative on McCaskill.

I suggested I might possibly maybe consider thinking about voting for Jay Nixon (D) for Gov. since he had acted in a responsible, bi-partisan fashion managing the State through the crisis.

You would not beleieve the vitriolic, lying, push-polling calls I receive hourly from all manner of liberal pond scum ever since.

I herewith declare I am no longer a conservative-leaning independent who thinks about each candidate and votes accordingly. From this day forward, for the rest of my time on this mortal coil, I am an angry older white male straight-ticket Republican.

If we don’t need Akin for a Senate majority, I want him to lose. Then I want to see him, and his family, politically destroyed.

When you screw up like he did, you drop out. Period, dot. If you screw up, drop out, and don’t cost us the seat, you get to have a future. If you don’t, if you put your personal desires and ambitions above the rest of us, then we destroy those desires and ambitions.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in New Jersey. RCP has Menendez up by +19, but the Dominican hooker that broke a few hours ago is likely to drop that a bit. If it drops it enough, that 1 Independent from Maine is going to find himself in a veeeery interesting position.

I used to be an independent who would vote for the democrat if his positions seem reasonable. The day Obamacare was passed I swore I’d never vote for a Democrat for national office. Fortunately I saw Obama for the danger he was and didn’t vote for any democrats in 2008, but their insult to the voters with Obamacare sealed the deal for the 50 or so years. I also promised that if I have to pay any additional taxes as a result of Obamacare I will donate an equal amount of money to a Republican candidate or group. I feel like a lot of formerly moderate independent people have been converted in the last 4 years, for various reasons.

“And they only needed about 1,000 or so to get to a reliable margin of error.”

With due respect, that’s just not true. There’s a big difference between the mathematical margin of error due to sampling size and statistics, versus the huge non-sampling error caused by having 90% of your polling go to non-responsive targets. If anybody honestly believes that the 10% of people willing to talk to political operatives at dinner time have the same opinions and voting habits as the 90% of people who have better things to do with their lives, well, God bless ‘em.

I don’t buy it. Intrade’s battleground state numbers look way off, showing close races where the race is decidedly not going to be close, and betting big on Obama in states where there’s really no evidence he has the edge. So something screwy is going on there, and it’s not the fraud factor. Intrade’s price is also only influenced by actual trading. A lot of those predicting a Romney win might have bought low and sat on their contracts–especially as there’s no convincing evidence right now to convince them it’s time to sell.

Ultimately the only thing Intrade is telling me is that the people who use Intrade may simply lean Democrat, at least in terms of buying volume. Remember, Wall Street supported Obama heavily in ’08. A significant number of blue-state Dems with higher incomes could easily skew the results. 0′s price bubble just before the first debate shows that traders were being overly swayed by their news sources, and the crash was a correction–but it didn’t continue to slide, as a realistic crash would be expected to. The fact that the crash leveled out right around the point just before its noticeable climb tells me that there’s a floor in the price that’s being dictated by something other than the facts on the ground. That floor could simply be rich liberals betting heavily on their man. Romney voters are more likely to have put their money into his campaign.

It’s harder to convincingly spoof Intrade than you might think, and requires a lot more money than people claim. In order to do it convincingly, you would have to buy and sell contracts during peak volumes, when the numbers are moving due to events. You’d then have to keep spending money to maintain your desired outcome. Sure, it’s easy and cheap to create a blip, but not a sustained price change.

Intrade is one of the bigger worries, as far as I’m concerned. My only real question about it is whether Intrade is unduly influenced by foreign-based bettors, who may be getting a skewed perception through their media.

Right now, Romney is trading at $3.38 per contract. If he wins, his contract pays out at $10 per bet. If he loses, his contract doesn’t pay out. If you bought now, and he won, you would receive $10 in your account for a profit of $6.62.

You sell an “Obama will win” contract for $6.50. When Obama loses, you get to keep that $6.50.

Any time before the election, you can sell / buy back the contract you’ve bought / sold, for whatever price someone’s currently offering. So everything that’s gone before is ignored, the only thing that matters is “what are people currently willing to pay?”

Looking at the volume, and looking at the fact that most people think Obama’s going to win (even when they’re planning on voting against him), I think it would take somewhere between $100,000 and $1,000,000 to seriously “game” the InTrade results.

Both Obama and Romney have a fair number of donors in the $38,000 range (his campaign, plus to the Party, plus maybe to a State Party). SO I think it’s doable, so long as people think he’s going to win.

If people’s opinions change, Obama’s number on InTrade will crash, fast. I’ve seen it happen. Hell, in 2004 Bushes numbers crashed to nothing, and Kerry’s went sky high, after the Exit Poll numbers were leaked. I’m still kicking myself for not buying a whole bunch of ontracts that afternoon.

We hear all about the voters who will ‘crawl nekkid over broken glass’ to vote against Champ. I’m one of them, and I already voted (in Illinois, fat lot of good that will do).

But consider this: if Mr. Reince is playing the long game by getting the low-propensity voters out now and then getting the most reliable voters out on Election Day — and THEN on Election Day the roads are closed, the polling places are flooded, and confusion reigns — what happens?

It means no chance to flip PA, to flip CD2 in Maine, and perhaps to flip NH. Getting the first one would be sweet, getting the last one is essential.

I know, I know, I sound like AllahPundit.

I appreciate that Mr. Reince has only so many resources and has to focus. But that doesn’t stop US from urging the Broken Glass Pubs to get out and vote.

Steve, Republicans who vote in every election including the primaries, put up a yard sign, volunteer time, or donate money will show up and vote! Many already voted early for convenience reasons. Their politically connected friends will urge them to vote independent of the RNC. The RNC is trying to focus its efforts on those voters who are not as politically connected who might not vote.

One reason for the split between broken glass voters and less motivated voters is the bias of the news media. If you never watch Fox News, listen to conservative talk radio, or read conservative blogs, you might have thought that Obama is a smart, likeable guy doing his best in “the worst recession since the Great Depression”. You might think he had already won. The first debate was important because potential voters got to see the real Obama and the real Romney without the media filter. However, low information voters still don’t know about the even worse recession in the early 80s, that the Obama recovery is exceptionally weak, or the evidence that President Obama lied about the Benghazi militia attack.

The fact is, Obama will not have the same margins he enjoyed in ’08 but he will still win the election. Republican enthusiasm is concentrated in the south, not in places like Ohio, parts of Virginia, Wisconsin and Nevada. I suspect Obama wins all of those states and thus re-election. I know that won’t be make me any friends here but that’s what I am fairly sure will happen next Tuesday. I’ll check back next week and we’ll see who’s right and who’s wrong. No animus, I just think at the end of the day, Obama will draw enough minority voters in the swing states to overwhelm Romney.

Few people here have any real contact with the minority community, but I suspect that Obama’s support of gay marriage has greatly reduced their enthusiasm for showing up and actually voting. Remember how the California gay-marriage vote went contrary to expectation due to unexpectedly strong resistance from minorities.

I live in Illinois and firmly believe that even Illinois will be closer than people think. It will ultimately go to Obama. The Chicago machine guarantees that, but it will be close. Just look at the last gubernatorial election where every county but Cook (home to Chicago) and possibly one tiny county at the far southern tip or near St. Louis went Republican. Even with Chicago going Democrat, the Republican was within spitting distance of the win. If it’s close like this in Illinois, it will be Romney’s in other states.

That other county is St. Clair county, home of East St. Louis. As the county becomes more suburbified, the percentage of Democrats gets lower. But ESL HAS A SEPARATE ELECTION BOARD FROM THE COUNTY. So they can still fix elections for the county. And sadly, commit black on black political crime.

The politicians and their connected cronies get rich, while their constituents sell their “I voted” stickers for $10. And the streets are in bad shape. Murders are rampant. Houses are burned out.. Brush growns on building roofs downtown.

You cross the border into ESL, it is like going into another country. A poor, third world country. One you do not want to be in at night.

I told a robo poll that I was a young hispanic woman who voted for Obama in the last election but am currently voting for romney. Occasionally I will tell the truth to a pollster, but sometimes I just like to mess with them.

I think this sort of thing is more the rule than the exception, and there is something delicious in that.

Hundreds of pontificators and data geeks try to work out the very best way to divine the intentions of the electorate… and all it takes is a few pizzed-off private citizens to screw it all up. To borrow a word: “Heh”.

Can anybody recommend where/how best to monitor election night results? I’ll be so nervous I don’t think I’ll have an appetite for popcorn. I was thinking of hitting a San Francisco Dem election night party out of morbid enjoyment.

Sounds like Mr. Green might have to drunkblog election night, if there’s not already a plan for it…

I remember the feeling the next morning is always so anticlimactic. No more titanic battle to be swept up into.

A recent poll in the Oregonian showed a 6 point spread for Obama. We are talking about one of the bluest of blue states. If it is that close out here, Romney is ahead in a lot more places than you are hearing about. Don’t be discouraged! This is the time we can have our greatest impact! I’m in Washington state, but will be making calls this weekend and I’ve taken Tuesday off to help. I’ve converted two previous Obama voters and seen their ballots off in the mail. Each one of you can personally make a difference in this election.

Obama campaigned in 2008 as a blank screen upon which idealistic voters could project an idealized image. He let those voters down almost from day one. I have never seen voters reward that kind of a record and I have been working elections since 1978. Even in places like Chicago if a candidate runs as a paragon of virtue and turns out to be a scoundrel, breaking promises along the way, he or she will lose. Ask Carol Moseley Braun, who pretty much did as Senator what Obama did as President -ran as a symbol rather than on an actual record then behaved as a Chicago machine pol while in office. When Moseley Braun ran for reelection she couldn’t break that 47% barrier either and her Republican opponent was not only a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney in a state trending deep blue but he had little support from the regular Republican party. The suburban voters who had flocked to her earlier wanted no part of Moseley Braun the second time around and her support inside the city had also weakened.

I am an Ohio voter. I live in Hamilton county (Cincinnati), one of the key counties in a key swing state. I am not worried about the weather. we are getting steady rain, but not a major storm and no high windsI haven’t heard of any major power outages and haven’t experienced one myself even though I live in an area that is.highly susceptible to such outagws. The forecast is for weather to clear on Thursday and to be partly cloudy on Tuedat.

I live in central Ohio and I’ve seen a lot more Romney/Ryan signs in yards than Obama/Biden signs. That having been said there is a lot of concern about voter fraud at some of the early voting stations. Busloads of people who can’t speak English well enough to vote without an interpreter are showing up at the Morse Rd. location in Columbus (Franklin County) where they are given Democratic slate cards and are instructed to vote for the people on those cards. http://www.humanevents.com/2012/10/26/is-voter-fraud-being-committed-in-ohio/ One has to wonder, if they can’t speak English well enough to vote, did they pass the citizenship test?

I’m not worried that Morris’s landslide talk might keep Romney voters home due to complacency. My gut tells me that very few of us on the right are going to take anything for granted, for one thing; and the other thing is, we don’t want to just beat Obama–we want him to suffer a devastating, embarrassing loss. The conservatives who stayed home out of apathy when it was Clinton, Gore, and Kerry–many of them will not sit it out because they know Obama is a different breed of cat.

Hope you’re right. — Dick Morris can say what he wants, and I like Reince Priebus’ “long game”, but what worries me is early voting Democrats. I have that gnawing feeling that many of *them* are being set up to vote *again*, on Tuesday.

Given the history of the Democrat voter fraud machine, and their very purposeful and mostly successful efforts during the past year to block positive voter ID initiatives, my gut “instinct” tells me that just because ACORN got its butt kicked last year the problem is far from over. Getting their “key voters” to vote early frees them to either vote again on Tuesday and/or be available for “arm-twisting” and “getting the vote out” in likely toss-up precincts.

So, let’s not get cocky! Vote, vote, vote, as if our life depended on it. — It does!

Acorn are like cockroaches. The video that took them down in 08 was a light that caused them to scatter, but they’ve come crawling back to feed on the decay of society. Does anybody think that the legions of worthless “community organizer” types working for Acorn have gone out and gotten real jobs? Of course not. One way or another every one of those scum will be cranking out the fraud votes.

Here in kalifornia, we are already being told that the high number of absentee ballots (over 50%) are going to slow things down. It takes more time to erase those penciled in marks when the ballot doesn’t reflect the political correctness monitor’s beliefs.

My wife and I have already voted and I guarantee the political correctness monitor’s blood pressure is going to go through the roof. Probably too many changes to be made so those ballots might accidentally end up in the shredder or the bottom of San Francisco Bay. (Don’t laugh, it’s happened before and quite recently.)

We’re already at the point in the USA where we do not have free and fair elections. When virtually all media outlets support the regime and refuse to report on / actively help cover up their scandals it is not a free and fair election. When voter ID is challenged by the regime to help perpetrate fraud it’s not a free and fair election. Give these people 4 more years to consolidate their power and we may never see one again. Hugo Chavez became a de-facto dictator by slowly corrupting and perverting the electoral process, it can happen here.